Tag Archives: w2e

by Julie Blaustein

What is a start up company to do that is on a limited marketing budget or perhaps even overseas planning to launch? Why not enter to win the Web 2.0 Expo’s Launch Pad where they will receive instant and incredible amounts of exposure of their products or services to the Web 2.0 market. That is exactly what over 80 companies did but only 6 finalists were chosen to present before a panel of judges and were voted by the audience to be the winner. On Wednesday, May 5th. at the Web 2.0 Expo, the six finalist had just five minutes to present their company and if they went over that time they were gonged. Three judges included Ellen Park, VP of Marketing at Elance, Brian Singerman is a Principal at Founders Fund and Marshall Kirkpatrick is the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb.com and previously with Tech Crunch provided instant feedback and questions on the spot. Brady Forrest, Web 2.0 Expo Co-Chair, hosted the program.

Based on the people’s choice as determined by the audience’s clapping volume, the winner was Rhomobile. They create cross-platform native applications for all major smartphones with Rhodes, the open-source smartphone app framework. Along with RhoHub, the first hosted development as a service for mobile and RhoSync, a standalone server that keeps enterprise application data current and available on users’ smartphones, Rhomobile’s suite of products provide a complete mobility solution for businesses of all sizes.

The Finalists:
AskYourTargetMarket.com is the web’s first self-service online survey tool that includes a built-in consumer panel to fulfill all your market research studies on demand. No phone calls no delays, this pay-as-you-go service starts at only $29.95 and takes just a few hours to get delivered. This is an an offer that will save you or your company major money and will gather you serious market research.

Pearltrees came all the way from France to compete, is a social curation and discovery tool and that gives users a social way to organize, discover and share stuff they like on the Web.

Strings is an online service that empowers users to effortlessly discover interesting and relevant content. Users of strings.com automatically track their interests, share their tastes with friends, and discover new content based on their expressed personality. The Strings platform enables a new generation of discovery applications that can leverage the power of Strings to help users discover content both on and off the web.

Stupeflix is an automated video creation web service. It is unique in its ability to create highly produced video in real-time, at high volumes, with a highly programmable R/W API. With the Play Platform, Stupeflix makes it easy for any website to instantly transform its content into broadcast quality videos.

EnglEasy is the winner of StartUp Weekend which impressively only came into existence a few days before the contest. This is an Online Game solution that helps teach children English. Through advanced analytics and Fun games, they hope to Improve Learning through Play. With a little bit more time to develop their strategy they may have gone further in the contest.

More Pictures of Launch Pad here!

The Winner of Launch Pad: Adam Blum of Rhomobile

Mike Courtney of AskYourTargetMarket.com

Francois Rocaboy of Pearltrees

Edward Balassanian of Strings

Jeff Boudier of Stupeflix

Ahmed Siddiqui of Engleasy

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

Today concludes our video coverage of Web 2.0 Expo with a final interview with IBM. Of course IBM is certainly not the first company you think of when you think Web 2.0, but like last year’s Web 2.0 Expo, the show was filled with many startups and sprinkled with a few big players. This year’s big companies were IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and a few others. And much of the buzz was around ‘doing more with less’ through collaboration and cloud computing.

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and IBM is trying to get in on the action. At the end of last month, IBM announced an initiative dubbed “Open Cloud Manifesto” that calls for open standards to promote cloud computing. There’s a host of companies backing the manifesto, but oddly, the pioneers and leaders in cloud computing are absent.

According to Reuters, Amazon is reviewing the plan, Google has decided not to support it and Salesforce.com hasn’t publicly spoken on the matter yet. Also, Microsoft has publicly criticized IBM’s efforts.

On a lighter note, Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Kathy M. Mandelstein, marketing director at IBM Software Group, IBM Rational Software and WW Programs, Events and Web, about cloud computing, LotusLive, and Rational AppScan. IBM’s overall theme at Web 2.0 Expo was “Smart Work” and helping people and businesses to work smarter through collaboration and collective intelligence. Hear what Mandelstein had to say:

In addition to IBM, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed any of our interviews from earlier this week, check them out: ooVoo, MindTouch, Topix, chi.mp, and our Web 2.0 Expo highlight reel.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

Chi.mp launched into public beta last week during Web 2.0 Expo, and in the true spirit of lobbyconing, we caught up with Chi.mp’s CTO in the halls of San Francisco’s Moscone Center where Web 2.0 Expo was held. Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Anthony Eden, CTO of chi.mp, about their launch.

Chi.mp helps you manage your online identity and enables you to bring together your digital life into one place. So instead of having invite people to each of your online accounts, such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo, etc., Chi.mp enables you to pull all those services into one place that’s owned by you under your own domain name. This makes it easy to share and control your online identity.

In addition, Chi.mp enables you to have different personas, such as one for work, one for family and friends, and another for the general public. This allows you to control what others see and helps you better protect sensitive information, such as your home address, or images that you may only want your friends or family to see and not your boss, co-workers or the general public.

To learn more watch our interview with Chi.mp’s CTO Anthony Eden and grab your free .mp domain name before somebody else does. See Eden’s .mp site at anthony.mp and if you want to check out mine, I’m at MiikoMentz.mp and I also grabbed Miiko.mp. Now I just need to decide which one to populate and promote.

In addition to Chi.mp, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed our other interviews earlier this week, check them out: ooVoo, MindTouch, Topix and our Web 2.0 Expo highlight reel. Stay tuned tomorrow for our final Web 2.0 Expo interview with IBM.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

At Web 2.0 Expo last week, Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell spoke with Topix CEO Chris Tolles. Topix is a leading Internet news community that connects people on a local level to the news and events in their towns and cities, and it provides a place for people to discuss the news that matters most to them. With newspaper advertising shrinking and becoming less effective, local businesses are turning to other sources, such as Topix, to connect with customers.

Topix is becoming a great avenue for businesses that are dependent on local customers, such as restaurants, salons and spas, car dealerships, attorneys, doctors and other neighborhood-type businesses. However, many of these small business owners aren’t well versed in SEO practices or search advertising, but need to advertise online to drive customers into their stores, restaurants and local offices.

At Web 2.0 Expo last week, Tolles talked about Topix’s newly released services that are helping these types of businesses connect to a local audience in a local context. Check out our interview with Tolles:

In addition to Topix, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed our highlight reel or other interviews, check them out: ooVoo and MindTouch. Stay tuned all week for the full interviews with each company. Tomorrow’s video interview is with chi.mp.

Post and video by Miiko Mentz

In the spirit of Che Guevara, MindTouch rallied the crowd at Web 2.0 Expo last week with its social enterprise collaboration revolution. Bubblicious Reporter Jolie O’Dell caught up with the MindTouch team to learn about the newly launched MindTouch 2009, an enhanced developer platform for building rich collaborative applications and communities, and a new bi-directional message bus that further extends MindTouch’s powerful collaborative capabilities.

MindTouch Marketing Manager Sarah Carr explains how MindTouch is revolutionizing the way people and businesses collaborate using MindTouch’s open source enterprise collaboration platform; and MindTouch Sales Engineer Mike Diliberto talks about the new MindTouch 2009. Check it out:

In addition to MindTouch, the Bubblicious team talked with a few other companies offering social computing applications and services. If you missed yesterday’s video, watch our interview with ooVoo and our highlight reel. Stay tuned all week for the full interviews with each company. Tomorrow’s video interview is with Topix.

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks where one of my clients is MindTouch, which I’ve chosen to include in my coverage of Web 2.0 Expo due to them being an exhibitor and fitting the focus of our coverage.